February 29th, 2024
February 29th, 2024
Alternately titled: 111th leap year since 1582
the year Pope Gregory XIII world leader
(i.e. essentially paterfamilias among
Roman Catholic flock)
timely maneuvered around calendrical rock
and hard space implementing
viable system tracking years ad hoc
out of sync and lock
step by one day
with astronomical calendar,
slated more'n acceptable tick tock
off kilter around the year of 4818*
after common era making mock
re: regarding mankind organizing and
witnessing global chockablock
Democratic celebratory anniversary party
millenniums after Republican dynastic deadlock
thoroughly walled imponderable gridlock
worse fate than quaffing hemlock
practically snuffing out lock, stock
and barrel constitutional birthrights
thirteen original American
founding fathers ghosts experiencing shock
how initial inalienable rights
activists sacrificing life and limb
united with linkedin armlock
said freedom fighters shackled
within crowded jail moldering cinderblock
cold upon hemorrhoid riddle buttock
diehard libertarians unified, pilloried, denounced
legion with repulsion as Shylock
purported, reputed, touted playwright
(William Shakespeare's sited anti semite
The Merchant Of Venice) doth mock
Judaism in vogue four hundred plus years ago,
smoldering think white supremacists i.e. skinheads
violently aiming to knock
non Caucasians upside the head
courtesy pistol whip,
and/or emptying gunstock
into human flesh disenfranchise scaring up
one after another racial and/or ethnic aftershock
aforementioned celebrated bard unwittingly
strictly opinion of me:silly poet -
despite hashtagged as laughingstock,
(plus vitriolic objection taken)
voiced by Shakespearean expert defenders,
yours truly reckons mine thought provoking blurb
regarding storied, lauded, and feted Globe theater
literary King my interpretations not crock
Earth's orbit around the Sun (year)
and rotation on its axis (day) where
latter not perfectly in line there
by necessitating
smooth functioning of Gregorian calendar
(also called New Style Calendar)
which did premiere
fifteen eighty two courtesy king's spear.
Ever since 1752, whence
in the modern sense
the first leap year implemented
madding crowds reportedly rioted
most likely uttering expletive
than "what nonsense"
reportedly riots erupted
courtesy chaos did arrange,
when England made the change
spurring some citizens
demanding immediate compensatory exchange
they get their 11 days back home on their range
from the government haint so strange.
To determine whether a year is a leap year,
follow these steps without Fanfare
For The Common Man
the famous title of Aaron Copland air:
1. If the year is evenly divisible by 4,
go to step 2. Otherwise, go to step 5.
2. If the year is evenly divisible by 100,
go to step 3. Otherwise, go to step 4.
3. If the year is evenly divisible by 400,
go to step 4. Otherwise, go to step 5.
4. The year is a leap year (it has 366 days).
5. The year is not a leap year (it has 365 days)
* The Gregorian calendar will have gained a day by the year 4818 CE (2,794 years from now), so at some point there will be a Gregorian leap year specially made not a leap year. The logical thing to do would be to make 3204 CE not a leap year, pushing the calendar from 1/2 day ahead of the solar year to 1/2 day behind the solar year. Making that decision is about 1,000 years in the future.
The Gregorian calendar is still slightly too long relative to the mean tropical year (which very slowly gets shorter). At some point in the future, it will be necessary to have fewer leap years (or days), not more. No one has agreed to anything yet, but the 400 year centennial rule could be changed to 500 years, the millennial leap year in 4000 (and some other future dates) could be skipped, various other possibilities, but all require a reduction in leap years, not a double leap year or extra leap years.
The first leap year was in 45BC. There were supposed to be 12 leap years from 45BC through 1 BC, but there might have been an extra because the Romans initially botched the implementation of the system. But let’s say there were 12. Then, had the Julian calendar been kept all this time there would have been another 500 leap years from 4AD through 2000AD for a total of 512 leap years by now. But most of us are using the Gregorian calendar. This fact makes the question subject to different interpretations. When switching to the Gregorian calendar countries using it agree to retroactively cancel leap years that the Gregorian calendar would not have recognized if it were in place since the beginning (45 BC). 1BC would still have been a leap year (it corresponds to 0000AD) but of the remaining intervening 20 years ending in 00AD, only 5 of them would have been leap years, meaning, if you accept that interpretation, 512–15 = 497 is the total number of leap years so far.
But there’s another interpretation, that once a leap year is acknowledged in a place in history, there was a leap year then regardless of whether the Gregorian calendar was adopted there at some time later. Since the dates of adoption range from the late 1500’s to the early 1900s that would mean that some places have skipped over only 3 leap years out of the 512 (beginning with 1700) some 2 leap years of the 512, some 1 of the 512, and some haven’t skipped any (those places that kept the Julian calendar until around WWI, such as Russia.) So in this interpretation, depending on the country you’re interested in there have been either 509, 510, 511 or 512 leap years since 45BC.
Copyright ©
Matthew Harris
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